On January 15th, four astronauts, Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Kimiya Yui and Oleg Platonov, all from different countries, landed safely back to earth near San Diego because one of them suffered a medical issue.
During the beginning of January when it was announced, officials made it clear that the evacuation wasn’t an emergency and the astronaut was in stable condition. Even with this assurance, there weren’t enough supplies up in space to mend or help whatever the astronaut went through, and a group was sent back to Earth for further assistance. With that, it’s marked the first time in history that NASA has ever sent back a crew due to a medical circumstance.
Their mission first began back in August when SpaceX launched seven people towards the International Space Station (ISS). This mission was supposed to last six to eight months, but was cut short by a month with the announcement of the crew member. This setback has changed the course in what the rest of the people will be doing up in space until they too are back. With over half the crew back on Earth, a lot of the science and projects can’t be done anymore with the low numbers.
“It’s a significant problem,” said Don Platt, a professor at Florida Tech and former International Space Station engineer. “That means, basically the crew members that are there are pretty much just concentrating on making sure the space station can continue to run, do any maintenance requirements that they may have. A lot of the science will have to be postponed.”
So most of these remaining members are stuck doing simple duties like maintenance and cleaning, instead of the science they were sent there for.
Even though this setback is its first in NASA history, the crew trains for an event like this to happen. These astronauts train for multiple possibilities to make sure if something unplanned were to happen, it wouldn’t be something they weren’t already prepared for.
The next crew rotation for the station is set to launch no earlier than Feb. 15 from Florida’s Space Coast and will hopefully go smoothly with little problems.
